A Hat Full Of Sky (12 page)

“Well, I think—” Tiffany began.

“I don’t really care what you think, because you don’t know enough yet,” said Annagramma sharply. She turned to the group in general. “Do we all at least have something for the Trials this year?” she asked. There were general murmurs and nods on the theme of “yes.”

“What about you, Petulia?” said Annagramma.

“I’m going to do the pig trick, Annagramma,” said Petulia meekly.

“Good. You’re nearly good at that,” said Annagramma, and pointed around the circle, from one girl to another, nodding at their answers, until she came to Tiffany.

“Soft Nellies?” she said, to sniggering amusement.

“What are Witch Trials?” said Tiffany. “Miss Level mentioned them, but I don’t know what they are.”

Annagramma gave one of her noisy sighs.

“You tell her, Petulia,” she said. “
You
brought her, after all.”

Hesitantly, with lots of “um”s and glances at Annagramma, Petulia explained about the Witch Trials. Um, it was a time when witches from all over the mountains could meet up and um see old friends and um pick up the latest news and gossip. Ordinary people could come along too, and there was a fair and um sideshows.

It was quite an um big event. And in the afternoon all the witches that um wanted to could show off a spell or um something they’d been working on, which was very um popular.

To Tiffany they sounded like sheepdog trials, without the dogs or the sheep. They were in Sheercliff this year, which was quite close.

“And is there a prize?” she asked.

“Um, oh no,” said Petulia. “It’s all done in the spirit of fun and good fellow—um, good sistership.”

“Hah!” said Annagramma. “Not even she will
believe that! It’s all a fix, anyway. They’ll all applaud Mistress Weatherwax. She always wins, whatever she does. She just messes up people’s minds. She just fools them into thinking she’s good. She wouldn’t last five minutes against a wizard. They do
real
magic. And she dresses like a scarecrow, too! It’s ignorant old women like her who keep witchcraft rooted in the past, as Mrs. Earwig points out in Chapter One!”

One or two girls looked uncertain. Petulia even looked over her shoulder.

“Um, people do say she’s done amazing things, Annagramma,” she said. “And, um, they say she can spy on people miles away—”

“Yes, they
say
that,” said Annagramma. “That’s because they’re all frightened of her! She’s such a bully! That’s all she does, bully people and mess up their heads! That’s
old
witchcraft, that is. Just one step away from cackling, in
my
opinion. She’s half cracked now, they say.”

“She didn’t seem cracked to me.”

“Who said that?”
snapped Annagramma.

Everyone looked at Tiffany, who wished she hadn’t spoken. But now there was nothing for it but to go on.

“She was just a bit old and stern,” she said. “But she was quite…polite. She didn’t cackle.”

“You’ve met her?”

“Yes.”

“
She
spoke to
you
, did she?” snarled Annagramma. “Was that before or after you kicked out the Fairy Queen?”

“Just after,” said Tiffany, who was not used to this sort of thing. “She turned up on a broomstick,” she added. “I
am
telling the truth.”

“Of course you are,” said Annagramma, smiling grimly. “And she congratulated you, I expect.”

“Not really,” said Tiffany. “She seemed pleased, but it was hard to tell.”

And then Tiffany said something really, really stupid. Long afterward, and long after all sorts of things had happened, she’d go “la la la!” to blot out the memory whenever something reminded her of that evening.

She said: “She did give me this hat.”

And they said, all of them, with one voice:
“What hat?”

Petulia took her back to the cottage. She did her best, and assured Tiffany that
she
believed her, but Tiffany knew she was just being nice. Miss Level tried to talk to her as she ran upstairs, but she bolted her door, kicked off her boots, and lay
down on the bed with the pillow over her head to drown out the laughter echoing inside.

Downstairs there was some muffled conversation between Petulia and Miss Level and then the sound of the door closing as Petulia left.

After a while there was a scraping noise as Tiffany’s boots were dragged across the floor and arranged neatly under the bed. Oswald was never off duty.

After another while the laughter died down, although she was sure it’d never go completely.

Tiffany could feel the hat. At least, she
had
been able to feel it. The virtual hat, on her real head. But no one could see it, and Petulia had even waved a hand back and forth over Tiffany’s head and encountered a complete absence of hat.

The worst part—and it was hard to find the worst part, so humiliatingly bad had it been—was hearing Annagramma say, “No, don’t laugh at her. That’s too cruel. She’s just foolish, that’s all. I told you the old woman messes with people’s heads!”

Tiffany’s First Thoughts were running around in circles. Her Second Thoughts were caught up in the storm. Only her Third Thoughts, which were very weak, came up with:
Even though your
world is completely and utterly ruined and can never be made better, no matter what, and you’re completely inconsolable, it would be nice if you heard someone bringing some soup upstairs….

The Third Thoughts got Tiffany off the bed and over to the door, where they guided her hand to slide the bolt back. Then they let her fling herself on the bed again.

A few minutes later there was a creak of footsteps on the landing. It’s nice to be right.

Miss Level knocked, then came in after a decent pause. Tiffany heard the tray go down on the table, then felt the bed move as a body sat down on it.

“Petulia is a capable girl, I’ve always thought,” said Miss Level after a while. “She’ll make some village a very serviceable witch one day.”

Tiffany stayed silent.

“She told me all about it,” said Miss Level. “Miss Tick never mentioned the hat, but if I was you, I wouldn’t have told her about it anyway. It sounds the sort of thing Mistress Weatherwax would do. You know, sometimes it helps to talk about these things.”

More silence from Tiffany.

“Actually, that’s not true,” Miss Level added. “But as a witch I am incredibly inquisitive and
would love to know more.”

That had no effect either. Miss Level sighed and stood up. “I’ll leave the soup, but if you let it get too cold, Oswald will try to take it away.”

She went downstairs.

Nothing stirred in the room for about five minutes. Then there was faintest of tinkles as the soup began to move.

Tiffany’s hand shot out and gripped the tray firmly. That’s the job of Third Thoughts: First and Second Thoughts might understand your current tragedy, but
something
has to remember that you haven’t eaten since lunchtime.

Afterward, and after Oswald had speedily taken the empty bowl away, Tiffany lay in the dark, staring at nothing.

The novelty of this new country had taken all her attention in the past few days, but now that had drained away in the storm of laughter, and homesickness rushed to fill in the empty spaces.

She missed the sounds and the sheep and the silences of the Chalk. She missed seeing the blackness of the hills from her bedroom window, outlined against the stars. She missed…part of herself….

But they’d laughed at her. They’d said “What hat?” and they’d laughed even more when she’d raised her
hand to touch the invisible brim and hadn’t found it
….

She’d touched it every day for eighteen months, and now it had gone. And she couldn’t make a shamble. And she just had a green dress, while all the other girls wore black ones. Annagramma had a lot of jewelry, too, in black and silver.
All
the other girls had shambles, too, beautiful ones. Who cared if they were just for show?

Perhaps she wasn’t a witch at all. Oh, she’d defeated the Queen, with the help of the little men and the memory of Granny Aching, but she hadn’t used magic. She wasn’t sure, now, what she
had
used. She’d felt something go down through the soles of her boots, down through the hills and through the years, and come back loud and roaring in a rage that shook the sky:

…How dare you invade
my
world
, my
land
, my
life…

But what had the virtual hat done for her? Perhaps the old woman had tricked her, had just made her
think
there was a hat there. Perhaps she was a bit cracked, like Annagramma had said, and had just got things wrong. Perhaps Tiffany should go home and make Soft Nellies for the rest of her life.

Tiffany turned around and crawled down the
bed and opened her suitcase. She pulled out the rough box, opened it in the dark, and closed a hand around the lucky stone.

She’d hoped that there’d be some kind of spark, some kind of friendliness in it. There was none. There was just the roughness of the outside of the stone, the smoothness on the face where it had split, and the sharpness between the two. And the piece of sheep’s wool did nothing but make her fingers smell of sheep, and this made her long for home and feel even more upset. The silver Horse was cold.

Only someone quite close would have heard the sob. It was quite faint, but it was carried on the dark red wings of misery. She wanted,
longed for
, the hiss of wind in the turf and the feel of centuries under her feet. She wanted that sense, which had never left her before, of being where Achings had lived for thousands of years. She needed blue butterflies and the sounds of sheep and the big empty skies.

Back home, when she’d felt upset, she’d gone up to the remains of the old shepherding hut and sat there for a while. That had always worked.

It was a long way away now. Too far. Now she was full of a horrible, heavy, dead feeling, and
there was nowhere to leave it. And it wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

Where was the
magic
? Oh, she understood that you had to learn about the basic, everyday
craft
, but when did the “witch” part turn up? She’d been trying to learn, she really had, and she was turning into…well, a good worker, a handy girl with potions and a reliable person. Dependable, like Miss Level.

She’d expected—well, what? Well…to be doing serious witch stuff, you know, broomsticks, magic, guarding the world against evil forces in a noble yet modest way, and then
also
doing good for poor people because she was a really nice person. And the people she’d seen in the picture had had rather less messy ailments and their children didn’t have such runny noses. Mr. Weavall’s flying toenails weren’t in it
anywhere
. Some of them
boomeranged
.

She got
sick
on broomsticks.
Every time.
She couldn’t even make a shamble. She was going to spend her days running around after people who, to be honest, could sometimes be doing a bit more for themselves. No magic, no flying, no secrets…just toenails and bogeys.

She belonged to the Chalk. Every day she’d told the hills what they were. Every day they’d
told her who she was. But now she couldn’t hear them.

Outside, it began to rain, quite hard, and in the distance Tiffany heard the mutter of thunder.

What would Granny Aching have done? But even folded in the wings of despair she knew the answer to that.

Granny Aching never gave up. She’d search all night for a lost lamb….

She lay looking at nothing for a while, and then lit the candle by the bed and swiveled her legs onto the floor. This couldn’t wait until morning.

Tiffany had a little trick for seeing the hat. If you moved your hand behind it quickly, there was a slight, brief blurriness to what you saw, as though the light coming through the invisible hat took a little more time.

It
had
to be there.

Well, the candle should give enough light to be sure. If the hat was there, everything would be fine, and it wouldn’t matter what other people thought.

She stood in the middle of the carpet, while lightning danced across the mountains outside, and closed her eyes.

Down in the garden the apple-tree branches flayed
in the wind, the dream catchers and curse nets clashing and jangling….

“See me,” she said.

The world went quiet, totally silent. It hadn’t done that before. But Tiffany tiptoed around until she knew she was opposite herself, and opened her eyes again…

And there she was, and so was the hat, as clear as it had ever been.

And the image of Tiffany below, a young girl in a green dress, opened its eyes and smiled at her and said:

“We see you. Now we are you.”

Tiffany tried to shout, “See me not!” But there was no mouth to shout….

Lightning struck somewhere nearby. The window blew in. The candle flame flew out in a streamer of fire and died.

And then there was only darkness, and the hiss of the rain.

T
hunder rolled across the Chalk.

Jeannie carefully opened the package that her mother had given her on the day she’d left the Long Lake mound. It was a traditional gift, one that every young kelda got when she went away, never to return. Keldas could never go home. Keldas
were
home.

The gift was this: memory.

Inside the bag were a triangle of tanned sheepskin, three wooden stakes, a length of string twisted out of nettle fibers, a tiny leather bottle, and a hammer.

She knew what to do, because she’d see her mother do it many times. The hammer was used to bang in the stakes around the smoldering fire. The string was used to tie the three corners of the leather triangle to the stakes so that it sagged in the center, just enough to hold a small bucketful
of water, which Jeannie had drawn herself from the deep well.

She knelt down and waited until the water very slowly began to seep though the leather, then built up the fire.

She was aware of all the eyes of the Feegles in the shadowy galleries around and above her. None of them would come near her while she was boiling the cauldron. They’d rather chop their own legs off. This was
pure
hiddlins.

And this was what a cauldron really was, back in the days before humans had worked copper or poured iron. It looked like magic. It was supposed to. But if you knew the trick, you could see how the cauldron would boil dry before the leather burned.

When the water in the skin was steaming, she damped down the fire and added to the water the contents of the little leather bottle, which contained some of the water from her mother’s cauldron. That’s how it had always gone, from mother to daughter, since the very beginning.

Jeannie waited until the cauldron had cooled some more, then took up a cup, filled it, and drank. There was a sigh from the shadowy Feegles.

She lay back and closed her eyes, waiting.
Nothing happened except that the thunder rattled the land and the lightning turned the world black and white.

And then, so gently that it had already happened before she realized that it was starting to happen, the past caught up with her. There, around her, were all the old keldas, starting with her mother, her grandmothers, their mothers…back until there was no one to remember…one big memory, carried for a while by many, worn and hazy in parts but old as a mountain.

But all the Feegles knew about that. Only the kelda knew about the real hiddlin, which was this: The river of memory wasn’t a river, it was a sea.

Keldas yet to be born would remember, one day. On nights yet to come, they’d lie by their cauldron and become, for a few minutes, part of the eternal sea. By listening to unborn keldas remembering their past, you remember your future….

You needed skill to find those faint voices, and Jeannie did not have all of it yet, but
something
was there.

As lightning turned the world to black and white again, she sat bolt upright.

“It’s found her,” she whispered. “Oh, the puir wee thing!”

Rain had soaked into the rug when Tiffany woke up. Damp daylight spilled into the room.

She got up and closed the window. A few leaves had blown in.

O-kay.

It hadn’t been a dream. She was certain of that. Something…strange had happened. The tips of her fingers were tingling. She felt…different. But not, now that she took stock, in a bad way. No. Last night she’d felt awful, but now,
now
she felt…full of life.

Actually, she felt happy. She was going to take charge. She was going to take control of
her
life. Get-up-and-go had got up and come.

The green dress was rumpled, and really it needed a wash. She had her old blue one in the chest of drawers, but somehow it didn’t seem right to wear it now. She’d have to make do with the green until she could get another one.

She went to put on her boots, then stopped and stared at them.

They just wouldn’t do, not now. She got the new shiny ones out of her case and wore them instead.

She found both of Miss Level was out in the wet garden in her nightie, sadly picking up bits
of dream catcher and fallen apples. Even some of the garden ornaments had been smashed, although the madly grinning gnomes had unfortunately escaped destruction.

Miss Level brushed her hair out of one pair of her eyes and said: “Very, very strange. All the curse nets seem to have exploded. Even the boredom stones are discharged! Did you notice anything?”

“No, Miss Level,” said Tiffany meekly.

“And all the old shambles in the workroom are in pieces! I mean, I know they are really only ornamental and have next to no power left, but something really
strange
must have happened.”

Both of her gave Tiffany a look that Miss Level probably thought was very sly and cunning, but it made her look slightly ill.

“The storm seemed a touch magical to me. I suppose you girls weren’t doing anything…odd last night, were you, dear?” she said.

“No, Miss Level. I thought they were a bit silly.”

“Because, you see, Oswald seems to have gone,” said Miss Level. “He’s very sensitive to atmospheres….”

It took Tiffany a moment to understand what she was talking about. Then she said: “But he’s always here!”

“Yes, ever since I can remember!” said Miss Level.

“Have you tried putting a spoon in the knife section?”

“Yes, of course! Not so much as a rattle!”

“Dropped an apple core? He always—”

“That was the first thing I tried!”

“How about the salt and sugar trick?”

Miss Level hesitated. “Well, no…” She brightened up. “He does love that one, so he’s
bound
to turn up, yes?”

Tiffany found the big bag of salt and another of sugar, and poured both of them into a bowl. Then she stirred up the fine white crystals with her hand.

She’d found this was the ideal away of keeping Oswald occupied while they did the cooking. Sorting the salt and sugar grains back into the right bags could take him an entire happy afternoon. But now the mixture just lay there, Oswaldless.

“Oh, well…I’ll search the house,” said Miss Level, as if that was a good way of finding an invisible person. “Go and see to the goats, will you, dear? And then we’ll have to try to remember how to do the dishes!”

Tiffany let the goats out of the shed. Usually
Black Meg immediately went and stood on the milking platform and gave her an expectant look as if to say, I’ve thought up a
new
trick.

But not today. When Tiffany looked inside the shed, the goats were huddled in the dark at the far end. They panicked, nostrils flaring, and scampered around as she went toward them, but she managed to grab Black Meg by her collar. The goat twisted and fought her as she dragged her out toward the milking stand. Meg climbed up because it was either that or have her head pulled off, then stood there snorting and bleating.

Tiffany stared at the goat. Her bones felt as though they were itching. She wanted to…do things, climb the highest mountain, leap into the sky, run around the world. And she thought: This is
silly
. I start every day with a battle of wits with an
animal
!

Well, let’s show this creature who is in charge.

She picked up the broom that was used for sweeping out the milking parlor. Black Meg’s slot eyes widened in fear, and
wham!
went the broom.

It hit the milking stand. Tiffany hadn’t intended to miss like that. She’d wanted to give Meg the wallop the creature richly deserved, but somehow, the stick had twisted in her hand. She raised it again, but the look in her eye and the whack
on the wood had achieved the right effect. Meg cowered.

“No more games!” hissed Tiffany, lowering the stick.

The goat stood as still as a log. Tiffany milked her out, took the pail back into the dairy, weighed it, chalked up the amount on the slate by the door, and tipped the milk into a big bowl.

The rest of the goats were nearly as bad, but a herd learns fast.

All together they gave three gallons, which was pretty pitiful for ten goats. Tiffany chalked this up without enthusiasm and stood staring at it, fiddling with the chalk. What was the point of this? Yesterday she’d been full of plans for experimental cheeses, but now cheese was
dull
.

Why was she here, doing silly chores, helping people too stupid to help themselves? She could be doing…
anything!

She looked down at the scrubbed wooden table.

HElp Me

Someone had written on the wood in chalk. And the piece of chalk was still in her hand—

“Petulia’s come to see you, dear,” said Miss Level, behind her.

Tiffany quickly shifted a milking bucket over the words and turned around guiltily.

“What?” she said. “Why?”

“Just to see if you’re all right, I think,” said Miss Level, watching Tiffany carefully.

The dumpy girl stood very nervously on the doorstep, her pointy hat in her hands.

“Um, I just thought I ought to see how you, um, are…” she muttered, looking Tiffany squarely in the boots. “Um, I don’t think anyone really wanted to be unkind….”

“You’re not very clever and you’re too fat,” said Tiffany. She stared at the round pink face for a moment and
knew
things. “And you still have a teddy bear help me and you believe in fairies.”

She slammed the door, went back to the dairy, and stared at the bowls of milk and curds as if she was seeing them for the first time.

Good with Cheese. That was one of the things everyone remembered about her: Tiffany Aching, brown hair, Good with Cheese. But now the dairy looked all wrong and unfamiliar.

She gritted her teeth. Good with Cheese. Was that
really
what she wanted to be? Of all the things people could be in the world, did she want to be known just as a dependable person to have around rotted milk? Did she
really
want to
spend all day scrubbing slabs and washing pails and plates and…and…and that weird wire thing just there, that—

…cheese cutter…

—that cheese cutter? Did she want her whole life to—

Hold on…

“Who’s there?” said Tiffany. “Did someone just say ‘cheese cutter’?”

She peered around the room, as if someone could be hiding behind the bundles of dried herbs. It couldn’t have been Oswald. He’d gone, and he never spoke in any case.

Tiffany grabbed the pail, spat on her hand, and rubbed out the chalked
Help Me
.

—
tried
to rub it out. But her hand gripped the edge of the table and held it firmly, no matter how much she pulled. She flailed with her left hand, managing to knock over a pail of milk, which washed across the letters…and her right hand let go suddenly.

The door was pushed open. Both of Miss Level was there. When she pulled herself together like that, standing side by side, it was because she felt she had something important to say.

“I have to say, Tiffany, that I think—”

“—you were very nasty to Petulia just—”

“—now. She went off crying.”

She stared at Tiffany’s face. “Are you all right, child?”

Tiffany shuddered.

“Er…yes. Fine. Feel a bit odd. Heard a voice in my head. Gone now.”

Miss Level looked at her with her heads on one side, right and left in different directions.

“If you’re sure, then. I’ll get changed. We’d better leave soon. There’s a lot to do today.”

“A lot to do,” said Tiffany weakly.

“Well, yes. There’s Slapwick’s leg, and I’ve got to see to the Grimly baby, and it’s been a week since I’ve visited Surleigh Bottom, and, let’s see, Mr. Plover’s got gnats again, and I’d better just find a moment to have a word with Mistress Slopes…then there’s Mr. Weavall’s lunch to cook. I think I’ll have to do that here and run down with it for him, and of course Mrs. Fanlight is near her time, and”—she sighed—“so is Miss Hobblow,
again….
It’s going to be a full day. It’s really hard to fit it all in, really it is.”

Tiffany thought: You stupid woman, standing there looking worried because you just haven’t got time to give people everything they demand! Do you think you could ever give
them
enough
help? Greedy, lazy, dumb people, always
wanting
all the time! The Grimly baby? Mrs. Grimly’s got eleven children! Who’d miss one?

Mr. Weavall’s dead already! He just won’t go! You think they’re grateful, but all they’re doing is making sure you come around again! That’s not gratitude, that’s just insurance!

The thought horrified part of her, but it had turned up and it flamed there in her head, just itching to escape from her mouth.

“Things need tidying up here,” she muttered.

“Oh, I can do that while we’re gone,” said Miss Level cheerfully. “Come on, let’s have a smile! There’s lots to do!”

There was
always
lots to do, Tiffany growled in her head as she trailed after Miss Level to the first village. Lots and lots. And it never made any difference. There was no end to the
wanting
.

They went from one grubby, smelly cottage to another, ministering to people too stupid to use soap, drinking tea from cracked cups, gossiping with old women with fewer teeth than toes. It made her feel ill.

It was a bright day, but it seemed to darken as they walked on. The feeling was like a thunderstorm inside her head.

Then the daydreams began. She was helping to splint the broken arm of some dull child when she glanced up and saw her reflection in the glass of the cottage window.